I am happy to report that the coffee commercial that I wrote about last week has been a great source of Input for my students as we continue to follow this year’s Winter Olympics. 

I wanted to say that I have updated the resources. I published last week’s post/resources quickly because I wanted us all to take advantage of the content in real time (even if my slides and story were not perfect). Here is how I updated the materials, and I am sharing a few activities to amplify Input and a new Output extension game that you can use with any 24 pictures from any Video Clip Chat or any 24 pictures, for that matter. Last week’s post also talked about my process for creating a Video Clip Chat. 

This Week’s Updates: 

Video Clip Chat Slide Show: The Coffee Run/The Coffee Man 

-Olympic Resources / the Video Clip Chat Story in past tenses in Spanish (I also added an English version) 

-Picture Talk: Map of 2026 Olympics (in Spanish)

-Pictures With Spanish Keywords  

-Ways To Amplify the Input: Compiled Pictures For Various Activities

-24 Pictures For Printing For Triangle Extension Activity / Explanation/Worksheet

-Pictures With Blank Textboxes Below

-Pictures With Blank Side Textboxes  

-Pictures With Spanish Story in the Past 

Input Activities: Here are some Activities to amplify your Input using 4 to 9 pictures on a slide or printed on one page (pictures have been compiled in that section in the slide show)

-Class Flyswatter Game – show on the screen and divide students into two teams. Describe a picture and have students hit the picture you are describing.  

-Pair Race Game – Print the 4 slides and have students pair up. Describe a sentence and the student who circles the correct picture first gets a point.

-Listening Assessment – Show or Print and describe a picture. Have students write down the correct number of the slide being described.

-Reading Assessment – Provide sentences and do the same as the listening grade.

Output Extension Class Activity: THE EXTENSION TRIANGLE GAME

The goal of this game is to help students develop their sentences moving from simple sentences to more detailed ones. In class we talk about what that means. Some suggestions for helping students develop their sentences is to talk with students about adding and using the following: 

-transition words/expressions and time markers 

-adjectives/descriptive words and clauses that require that/who/which

-adverbs that explain how one is doing something 

-prepositional phrases like with …, in/on/at …, like …, for … 

-conjunctions: and, but, or, because, although, even though   

The full details are here with the accompanying handouts.

This is a post listening/reading extension writing activity to do with a Clip/Video Chat using 24 screenshots. I am calling it the TRIANGLE EXTENSION GAME because I like a good IMAGE. In this case, the image helped students know how to pass their team’s worksheets/handouts. 

Prior to class: 

-Divide your class into teams of 6 students

-Print one of these handouts per team double-sided (2nd tab)

-Print 24 pictures that are numbered from the pretaught video clip and place around the classroom, hallway, or open area

During class: 

-On each team of 6, students should pair up with another person

-Have students each take one of the sheets of paper meaning one student pair will have the sheet with numbers 1-8, another pair 9-16, and the other pair 17-24.   

GOAL:

The goal is for each student pair to go to any picture and write one well-developed sentence about the situation (*there is even an additional space for an extra sentence* as the whole purpose of this activity is to DEVELOP THEIR THOUGHTS). Students are encouraged to develop and extend their thoughts by adding transition/time words, conjunctions, and established details and even unestablished details that they can write in the target language (the story line or premise of a story should not be changed but it can be embellished). 

-Student pairs should be given 3 minutes to write as many sentences as possible on their paper. When that time is up, they give their paper to their teammates with the next sheet following the triangle (1 → 9 → 17 → 1) 

-Since they are on the same team, they continue the work of their peers and even help to edit the language that was written. Helping each other improve the accuracy is beneficial because the goal in the end is for the teacher to decide who has the most detailed and well-developed written story when looking at all three papers. 

-Once the three rounds are completed, they should be given a different colored pencil, and they are able to reread and edit their text but they should not add anymore sentences or details.

In truth, this is just an activity to get students thinking about how to develop their sentences while they are up and moving around the room. There is a teamwork effort that motivates many of my high school students, and by making it a contest, it adds some competition which my students also enjoy. 

That is all for this mid-February spark of creation.

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